The furniture store was a total loss, the two adjacent structures had sustained considerable damage. There was a wide open space where the Market Street Café had once stood, and only a cement slab as a reminder of the Pioneer Taxicab Company. For days we had been locked out of town, not knowing what to expect, and even after the barricades came down, I was leery of Market Street. But my mother needed stockings from the five-and-dime, and she had sent me to get them since, to her way of thinking, it was my fault she had to dress up for a meeting with “them goddamn snooty school people.”
“Do I look awright, Tangy Mae?” she asked for the third time as she parked the car on the school lot.“Wonder what this is all about? I bet they gon’ ask me if you can come back next year. I already got in my mind what I’m gon’ say.You ain’t going, and that’s final.”
I would have asked her why we had come, but looking at my mother, I knew the answer. She had come to flaunt her beauty. It had taken her nearly two hours to dress for this meeting, and she looked absolutely stunning. She wore a brown tunic suit with tiny pink dots and pink cuffed sleeves, leather pumps, and a faille hat with a single pink feather.
We got out of the car, and she held my arm, preventing me from moving forward, as we watched an assemblage of parents and teachers enter the school. It was the presence of four white men entering the schoolyard from the street that caused my mother to reach up and snatch a bug from her lovely face.
“Tangy Mae, what you done went and done?” she asked.
“Nothing, Mama,” I answered, but I could tell she did not believe me.
I lingered outside with Edith Dobson and Coleman Hewitt, our principal’s son.We spoke to Reverend Nelson as he went in, then we looked at each other questioningly.
“What’s this meeting all about, Coleman?” Edith asked.
Coleman was a short, pimply-faced boy, the firstborn of the four Hewitt children. He shoved his hands into his pants pockets and avoided making eye contact with Edith. “They’ll tell us when they’re ready,” he said.“I’m not suppose to say anything until then.”
There were three other students in the yard with us: Larry Weston, Philip Ames, and Harold Brandon. They were staring at the charred, skeletal remains of what would have been our new school. Edith nudged me and I followed her across the yard.
“It’s a mess, isn’t it?” she said.“Daddy says it’s not Sam’s fault. He doesn’t blame your brother at all. He says they kept Sam in jail for no reason, and they can do that to any colored man and get away with it. He says it’s time somebody showed them that we’re not going to stand for it.”
“But somebody could have been killed in one of those fires,” I said.“We’re lucky no one was.”
“Do you think it’s over?”
“No.They’ve let us back into town, but I don’t think it’s over. I do think people are beginning to see what Hambone was talking about.”
“Daddy doesn’t think it’s over, either,” Edith said. “He’s afraid somebody’s gonna get hurt. He’s an undertaker, but he doesn’t want people to die unless it’s from old age. Mama says with ideas like that he’ll die old and poor himself.”
“Edith, do you know what this meeting is about?”
“A little.”
I heard my name called and I turned to see my mother storming across the school’s short wooden porch and nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to reach her car.
“Come on, Tangy Mae!” she snapped. “Get in the car!”
“What happened, Mama?” I asked, as I raced along beside her.
“What happened? I’ll tell you what happened,” she said. “You done outsmarted yo’self this time.They sitting in there planning to send you to that white school next year.They say you intelligent, you carry yo’self like a proper young lady, and you the somebody gon’ integrate that school.” She laughed bitterly. “I ain’t buying none of it.They wanna take you away from me.That Mr.Pace of yours always wanted to take you away. I told ’em to kiss my ass ’cause you ain’t going to that school. They can find another guinea pig. Them Dobsons feel the same way ’bout they daughter, but they foolish. They gon’ sit there and let them people talk ’em into it. Not me.”
I was not frightened by the speed or recklessness with which my mother drove. Disappointment had rendered me numb, and I blamed myself for not preparing her.Over the weeks, I could have given her some subtle hints. But I realized that the outcome probably would have been the same.
Mama turned into the Garrisons’ driveway and parked behind Mr. Frank’s car.“Pearl, you ain’t gon’ believe this,” she said, as soon as Mr. Frank opened the door. “Give me a drink and let me tell you ’bout it.You ain’t never gon’ guess what them school people wanted wit’ me.”
Miss Pearl eyed me, then said, “Well, I know Tangy Mae wadn’t in no kind of trouble ’cause she ain’t the kind to be. I figure they want you to leave her in school another year.”
“In the white school, Pearl!” Mama shouted.“They want her to go to the white school. Now you know they must think I’m some kinda fool. They gon’ close town down ’cause they say one of my babies tried to burn it down, then they gon’ come back and say they want one of my babies to go to school wit’ theirs.”
“Slow down, Rozelle, ”Mr. Frank said.“I think them people paying you a compliment.We all know you got a smart girl there. What you think about it, Tangy?”
“She ain’t gotta think about it. She ain’t going and that’s that. They wanna send five mo’ children wit’ her. ‘Well-behaved children, so she don’t have to go by herself, ’” Mama said, mimicking someone from the meeting.“Tangy Mae gon’ get a job—or starve. She ain’t going back to school.”
She meant every word she said, but my mother was a liar. I remembered her telling me that people in Georgia did not get hungry, so how could I starve? She had said that I was not going back to school, but I was. I had to.